Jozef Mackiewicz
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Józef Mackiewicz (April 1, 1902 - January 31, 1985) was a prominent Polish language writer and publicist. He was an enthusiastic anti-Communist, but during his life Mackiewicz was attacked by the right as well as by the left. The Polish nationalists hated him for desecrating Polish national values. In fact, Mackiewicz was an enemy of narrow ethnic nationalism: he regarded himself as a citizen of the multinational Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Jozef Mackiewicz was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In 1907 his family moved back to Vilnius (Wilno) (now in Lithuania) - his family was Polish-Lithuanian gentry. Mackiewicz studied natural sciences and before World War II he worked as a journalist in the Wilno Słowo (The Word). Between October 1939 and May 1940 he was a publisher and editor-in-chief Gazeta Codzienna, a Polish language daily in Lithuanian-occupied Vilnius. In his articles Mackiewicz tried to start dialog between Lithuanians and Lithuanian Poles. After annexation of Lithuania by Soviet Union, he worked as a laborer. In 1942 he was a witness of massacre of Jews by Nazis in Ponary - he described this event in his book Nie trzeba glosno mowic (It should not be spoken loudly). In 1943 (with consent of Polish underground authorities) he assisted in the first excavations of the mass-graves of the Polish soldiers killed by Soviet NKVD in Katyn in 1940. At some point of time he was sentenced to death for treason by the underground tribunal. The view of Mackiewicz as a traitor heavily influenced his perception after WW2.
Mackiewicz's prose is extremely realistic: he believed there were no untouchable subjects. In 1957, he published Kontra, a narrative account of the particularly brutal and treacherous handover of thousands of anti-Soviet Cossacks by British soldiers in Austria.
Amongst others he wrote: Droga do nikąd (The Road to Nowhere), Zwyciestwo prowokacji (Victory of provocation), W cieniu krzyza (In the shadow of the cross).
His voluminous output as a writer of fiction and a publicist has been undergoing an unusual revival after many years of marginal interest.pl:Józef Mackiewicz